


I Hate You (But You Can Listen)

by Flavoredfaeman



Series: Marius Bothers The Poor Inspector [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Lyf is talked about but not actually there, character death is for nastya and lyf, it is also after the events of the bifrost incident, its not really very obvious but nastya and brian are qpps and I will die on this hill, marius and nastya are not friends but they are more so than before, marius is in love with lyf still, marius thinks lyf is dead, nastya comes back from space, there other mechs are there but not enough to really be tagged, this takes place after out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flavoredfaeman/pseuds/Flavoredfaeman
Summary: Marius Von Raum is hurting and Nastya finally comes back from the void of space. They have more in common now now then ever before.
Relationships: The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Series: Marius Bothers The Poor Inspector [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992748
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	I Hate You (But You Can Listen)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Sorry I haven't been writing much, school has been kicking my ass!  
> This an inbetween part of a bigger series I've been working on, it works as a stand alone story too though which is why I'm posting it now!
> 
> Content Warnings:  
> Talk of suicide  
> Depression  
> Grief  
> Talk of character death  
> Out  
> Talk of Marius' choices being taken away from him because he gets drugged to be taken away from Midgard  
> Talk of being drugged  
> Resentment and anger  
> Contemplation of suicide  
> Slight idealization of suicide  
> (Marius is in a bad place at the beginning of this, it's not super graphic but please be careful)
> 
> Lmk if you want me to put any more warnings!

Marius and Nastya had never been what you would call friends.  
They didn't hate each other - well, Marius didn't hate Nastya, he wasn't quite sure how she had felt about him. They just weren't particularly close. They often had violin-offs, they often bickered like toddlers when they were near each other for too long (a different type of bickering than Jonny and Nastya's which was a sibling thing), and they had know each other for the least amount of time out of the rest of the mechs.  
So no, they had never really been friends.  
But Marius had still mourned with the rest of them when Nastya went out. He still missed her dearly.

After being literally dragged out of The Yggdrasil System Marius had been thinking about her more often.  
At the time of her leaving he had barely understood, he couldn't fathom leaving like that. No messages, no apologies, no explanation, just gone.  
He thought it had seemed wrong to abandon your lover just because they had changed, after all, to him the Aurora had not differed noticeably since he'd been aboard.  
He couldn't picture leaving the only family any of them had left.  
But after knowing Inspector Lyf, after being drugged and dragged away from their home world, leaving it and them to be devoured by things squamous, and after waking up a year after the mechs had left the system - far too late to even consider going to save them - Marius thought he understood.  
The pain, the betrayal, and the grief that wracked his body and mind constantly hurt him beyond measure and he understood just wanting it to stop, at any cost.  
Marius thought he had known them, Raphaella and Ivy. He was the closest with them than any of the other mechs, even if he had known that their friendships were based on how much they could tolerate him and how useful he could be to them.  
He thought they at least had a basic respect for each other.  
He thought this until he had his choice ripped away from him in an instant.  
Ivy hadn't done anything truly wrong, she had just let Raphaella make the decision for them, and Marius was pretty sure Ivy had calculated that it would have the best outcome for her if she had done just that.  
Marius understood, but he still found it hard to be in a room with her for too long.  
Raphaella. Well, she'd fucking tricked him, drugged him, kidnapped him, and let him wake when it was too late for Marius to do anything to save Lyf. As far as unforgivable acts went in his book, that was one of them. One of the biggest honestly.  
She had tried to get his forgiveness a few times, but had stopped the fourth time Marius ripped her to shreds.  
Marius, for his part, was at the point where he could just handle not bolting when she walked into a room he was in when there were others around.  
So yeah. Marius thought he understood not recognizing people you thought you would never leave.  
He had been thinking, more recently, about going out too. Not seriously, he tried to tell himself, just, to get away from everyone. Just to get some rest that didn't involve nightmares about squamous things and people who wore his friends faces and hurt him.  
He just wanted to rest. He was so damned tired.  
He was almost, almost, too tired to be angry, and he was pretty sure he was so tired because of all the sadness.  
He thought that maybe floating in space for a few centuries could really help, and if he was lucky he wouldn't have to come back.

It was in such a state that Marius saw Nastya stumble back into the Aurora from an airlock, almost two centuries after she'd left.  
Her hair was far longer than it'd been when she left and covered in frost, and her skin - which had always given off a semi-dead impression - was more translucent than before, really showing off her odd veins and the mercury that ran through them, she had walked in stiffly, clutching the piece of Aurora she'd taken with her.  
Marius had been pacing the halls when he saw this and was now standing a step or so in front of Nastya, his hands out cautiously.  
Then her glazed eyes darted around until the semi focused on Marius, he saw recognition flash in them before she took a shaky step forward and wrapped him in a hug, slumping against him.  
He could feel the ice melting off of her jacket and out of her hair, making his own clothes damp and his skin cold.  
Gods she was freezing.  
Marius tried to kick his ass into gear, but holy shit he just didn't know what to do.  
They had all thought Nastya was gone, permanently, and he felt like he was holding a dead woman.  
Cold.  
She was cold.  
He needed to warm her up! And get her out of the damp clothes before she got some horrid sickness!  
"May I pick you up?" He asked, carefully rubbing her back.  
She nodded and with a voice raspy from disuse said, "I can't walk right now. 'd be helpful."  
"Okay. I'm picking you up now."  
Nastya gave a soft grunt of confirmation and Marius picked her up. She was alarmingly light, probably a side effect of floating in space for nearly two centuries. Marius figured there wasn't a lot of food out there.  
He took her to her room, and when he found it was only a few minutes away he thanked Aurora and carefully opened her door.  
He sat Nastya down on her bed and quickly pulled out some soft and warm looking outfits before laying them down before Nastya and let her know that he was going to go fetch her a towel for her hair.  
When he returned he knocked on the door and there was a faint 'come in.'  
He stepped in and saw that Nastya was now looking very comfy, but still half dead and still quite cold.  
He sat down next to her and asked if he could wrap her hair in the towel. She nodded and so he carefully got to work.  
When he was done he pulled away and then bit his lip, unsure what to do next.  
Nastya looked up again, eyes focusing somewhere behind his ear.  
"Engine room?" She rasped, tilting her head to the side.  
"Oh! Yes of course," Marius smiled nervously, thankful for the hint she'd given him.

Marius took Nastya to the engine room and they sat together in her pile of pillows and blankets.  
Nastya faded in and out of consciousness while Marius sat comfortably and looked around the room.  
He'd never actually been in the engine room before, but it was nice and warm. It felt home-y in a way that only really feels home-y once you've lived in a spaceship for a millennia.  
Speaking of the spaceship, Marius thinks she's happy. He was never particularly good at understanding her when she communicated with Nastya, and after Nastya went out Aurora had barely communicated at all. But he was certain the thrum of the engine was brighter now, perhaps not as bright as before, but bright nonetheless.

At some point Marius fell asleep as well, his own exhaustion kicking in.  
At some point he woke up blearily and thought he saw Nastya leaning against the side of the Aurora talking to her in hushed tones. He thought he saw her put her hand gently against the wall and give a faint smile, but he was quickly asleep again and who was to say for sure.

When Marius fully awoke he saw Nastya taking off the towel on her head and shaking out her now dry hair. She looked to be in thought, though she nodded to Marius when she saw he was awake.  
"How're you feeling?" Marius asked, carefully sitting up and stretching his arms up over his head.  
"Hm." She sat still for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. "Better I think. Somewhat."  
"Well that's something," Marius gave her an encouraging smile, which Nastya wrinkled her nose at.  
They sat in silence for a little bit and Marius couldn't help but notice that Nastya kept messing with her hair, seemingly frustrated with its length.  
Marius carefully bumped her shoulder.  
"Mm?" She looked up at him, an eyebrow raised.  
"Would you like me to braid your hair?"  
Nastya made a face at him. "Not if your braiding skills match your doctor ones."  
Marius let out a soft laugh, and tried to push away the painful memories that came with it.  
"No worries there, I'm actually very good at braiding. I picked it up a while back."  
Nastya tilted her head and squinted at him, and Marius tried not to feel uncomfortable under her intense as ever gaze.  
"I know I am a little out of practice in regards to people, Marius, but I do feel that there is a story behind that."  
Marius gave her a bit of a pained smile and shrugged. "You got me. It's a bit of a long one though."  
Nastya gave him a small smile, then adjusted her position so her back was to Marius. "Well you can tell me while you braid."  
Marius wasn't quite sure where he got the comb from but he went to work combing through Nastya's hair. And as he combed and then braided, he told her about the bifrost incident, of his time on New Midgard, and of a second class inspector.

"And then everything went dark. I woke up a year later, far too late." Marius finished the story with a bitter sigh, letting go of Nastya's finished braid.  
Nastya moved again, going back to sitting next to Marius as she checked out her braid.  
"Nice… the braid is okay too," Nastya looked up at him snickering at her own joke.  
Marius shook his head with a laugh of his own.  
"That sucks though," Nastya said after a moment of comfortable silence.  
"Yeah. Yeah it does."  
They settled back into the silence, each lost in their own thoughts.  
After an indeterminate amount of time Marius cleared his throat.  
"I uh- I think I finally understand. Why you left that is." He kept his eyes trained on his hands but he could feel Nastya looking at him.  
"After waking up here, unable to save the one person I asked to save. I uh. The 'not recognizing people you thought you knew'.." He looks up at the ceiling now, ignoring the sting in his eyes. "I understand the tiredness now."  
Nastya shifted and after a moment of hesitation she wrapped Marius in a hug.  
"I'm sorry." She whispered.  
"For what?" Marius whispered back, gently wrapping his arms around her too.  
"I'm sorry for a lot. For leaving you all. That you understand how it feels. For abandoning rorie. For not understanding that everything must change. What I did was wrong." She took a shakey breath.  
"Don't do what I did Marius," she held him tighter. "Please."  
Marius didn't know what to say, or what to do, so he did what he felt he could. He cried. Marius cried for Nastya for all that she had missed and all that she had gone through, for the Aurora who had been without her lover for so long, for the crew who had all missed Nastya more than words would ever tell, for all the people that have by now been consumed by squamous things, for Lyfrassir Edda who he had loved and did love and who he could not save, and he cried for himself.  
Nastya cried too, though Marius was too busy with his own grief to analyze hers.  
They cried and they held each other and they cried more. It was cathartic, and it was freeing, and they both felt like shit afterwards but gods did they feel better.

After they had finished their crying Nastya and Marius went to go get some food. They had no clue what time it was, but Nastya had not eaten since she left and Marius had not eaten for long enough to be hungry.  
There was no one in the kitchen when they arrived and so Marius got to work cooking while Nastya sat on a counter, leaning against her beloved, and Nastya hummed out tunes and periodically even joined in with Marius as he sang.

About half an hour into this the door to the kitchen burst open and a wide eyed Jonny and Brian ran in, tackling Nastya in hugs.  
Soon every one of the mechs was in the kitchen hugging Nastya and catching back up.  
They might have berated Marius for not finding them sooner but they were too busy being glad that their dear engineer, crewmate, sister, qpp, friend, and incredibly loved Nastya was finally home.

Marius sat with them all for dinner, still far away from Raphaella and avoiding eye contact with her and Ivy, but he stayed in the room. Stayed with his family.  
Everything still hurt, but it was okay for now. Nastya was home, and that was all that truly mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope yall enjoyed!
> 
> You can find me @flavoredfaeman on varius social media


End file.
